Marijuana Business Magazine - Issue 09, Oct 2017

on to the patient without sacrificing our own revenue,”Macias said. “Bulk purchasing is everything.” The other benefit of bulk buying and streamlining costs? Macias doesn’t have to ask her cannabis suppliers for dis- counts or favors: “I don’t have to nitpick, and say, ‘Can you do this for $7 a gram instead of $8?’ I don’t want to have that conversation with my cultivator.” The reason, she explained, is she doesn’t want to introduce any awkward- ness or tension into her relationships with growers in the city. “Most of my business is driven by cultivators,”Macias said. And, she noted, many growers now come to her and offer bulk-purchase discounts.The upshot: She essentially gets discounts without having to ask for them. Preparing a Backup Plan Reliable inventory management also means having a manual plan ready in case your automated system goes down – as happened with Macias. She uses a software platform operated by MJ Freeway, which suffered a hacking inci- dent in early January that resulted in a major crash of the Denver company’s point-of-sale system. “Of all the DC dispensaries, we stayed open because we had a man- ual dispensing protocol previously approved through the Department of Health,” Macias said. For that manual backup plan to work, however, National Holistic staff- ers follow a daily routine that includes making sure all transactions and relevant customer data are recorded on Excel spread sheets. “We were able to stay open because everything is properly backed up. We knew what our patients’ limits were, how much of their allotted quanti- ties they had used, and we kept our doors open throughout that shutdown ordeal,” Macias said. Macias credits the strategy of having a manual backup to her experience in academia and at Colgate, which had its own standard operating procedures and best practices and where meeting com- pliance and safety standards was built into the day-to-day company culture. “I adopted the model from that previous experience,” she said. Experience – medical, scientific and business – and knowing how to apply it have served Macias well.They have helped put her in a position to capitalize on growing medical cannabis opportuni- ties in the eastern and southern United States, as well as in the District, which will become a destination for medical marijuana cardholders fromMaryland and tourists from across America. Professional experience, she stresses, can serve the whole industry well. “The more medical knowledge we have about this plant, and the more understanding we have, the better it’s going to be for everyone in this indus- try,” Macias said. ◆ A Natural Holistic Healing Center employee uses dry oregano to demonstrate how to properly roll a marijuana cigarette. 68 • Marijuana Business Magazine • October 2017